Google files motion to dismiss multistate antitrust lawsuit led by Texas attorney general

Google filed a motion on Friday to dismiss a multistate antitrust lawsuit led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, CNET reported. The lawsuit accuses Google of entering into illegal deals with online advertising rival Facebook, but fails to show that the search giant “engages in anticompetitive behavior,” the company said.

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Attorney General Paxton’s allegations are ‘more heat than light,’ and we believe they do not meet the legal standards to bring the case to trial,” Adam Cohen, Google’s director of economic policy, said in a blog post-Friday. “The complaint is misrepresented. Based on our business, products and motives, we filed a motion to dismiss the complaint based on its failure to provide reasonable antitrust claims.”

An unredacted version of the lawsuit, originally filed in 2020, says Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg both signed an illegal agreement that it said would make the social network Gain an edge in the search giant’s online ad auction. Facebook, now part of the parent company Meta, is not a defendant in the case.

Google’s deal with Facebook is not anticompetitive, Cohen said, adding that the social network was one of several partners in its ad-bid program announced back in 2018. Google’s motion on Friday asks people to ignore “egregious” monopoly abuse, Paxton said. “This company, whose motto used to be ‘Don’t be evil,’ is now asking the world to look at their egregious monopoly abuses, not to see evil and to hear evil,” Paxton said in an emailed statement. And don’t discuss evil deeds.”

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